We had a fairly large group this time at the Thompsons' home.
What's not to like about Emily? She is a fascina(oting character in her own right, despite (or because of?) a little agoraphobia and other personality quirks.
Higginson took up about half the book, as wass promised, and turned out to be a much more interesting person than he is usually depicted as in literary histories, thoughhe did try to get some poems more "grammatical" or more traditionally rhymed and metered. But he also supported John Brown's rebellion financially, stirred up the abolitionist movement, and led the first Black regiment into battle in the Civil War.
They both livied in a fascinating time, when many of the old New England giants of literature--Thoreau and Emerson, eg--were still alive and visited Emily's home, and when some of the newer experimentors, like Walt Whitman were emerging on the scene.
The book was quite a relief for its clarity and crisp prose after the very dense and redundant story of the Hemingses last month.
Biography of Dickinson and a few short poems, from Jack Thompson
Emily Dickinson Biography
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), ‘The Belle of Amherst’, American poet, wrote hundreds of poems including “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Heart, we will forget him!”, “I'm Nobody! Who are You?”, and “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!”;
Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port, --
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart!
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in Thee!
Among the ranks of other such acclaimed poets as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson is considered one of the most original 19th Century American poets. She is noted for her unconventional broken rhyming meter and use of dashes and random capitalisation as well as her creative use of metaphor and overall innovative style. She was a deeply sensitive woman who questioned the puritanical background of her Calvinist family and soulfully explored her own spirituality, often in poignant, deeply personal poetry. She admired the works of John Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but avoided the florid and romantic style of her time, creating poems of pure and concise imagery, at times witty and sardonic, often boldly frank and illuminating the keen insight she had into the human condition. At times characterised as a semi-invalid, a hermit, a heartbroken introvert, or a neurotic agoraphobic, her poetry is sometimes brooding and sometimes joyous and celebratory. Her sophistication and profound intellect has been lauded by laymen and scholars alike and influenced many other authors and poets into the 21st Century. There has been much speculation and controversy over details of Dickinson’s life including her sexual orientation, romantic attachments, her later reclusive years, and the editing and publication of various volumes of her poems. This biography serves only as an overview of her life and poetry and leaves the in-depth analysis to the many scholars who have devoted years to the study of Emily Dickinson, the woman and her works.
Emily Dickinson was born into one of Amherst, Massachusetts’ most prominent families on 10 December 1830. She was the second child born to Emily Norcross (1804-1882) and Edward Dickinson (1803-1874), a Yale graduate, successful lawyer, Treasurer for Amherst College and a United States Congressman. Her grandfather Samuel Fowler Dickinson (1775-1838) was a Dartmouth graduate, accomplished lawyer and one of the founders of Amherst College. He also built one of the first brick homes in the New England town on Main Street, which is now a National Historic Landmark ‘The Homestead’ and one of the now preserved Dickinson homes in the Emily Dickinson Historic District.
Emily had an older brother named William Austin Dickinson (1829-1895) (known as Austin) who would marry her most intimate friend Susan Gilbert in 1856. Her younger sister’s name was Lavinia ‘Vinnie’ Norcross Dickinson (1833-1899). The Dickinsons were strong advocates for education and Emily too benefited from an early education in classic literature, studying the writings of Virgil and Latin, mathematics, history, and botany. Until she was ten years old, she and her family lived with her grandfather Samuel and his family on Main Street. In 1840 they moved to North Pleasant Street, Emily’s window overlooking the West Street Cemetery where daily burials occurred. The same year, Emily entered Amherst Academy under the tutelage of scientist and theologian, Edward Hitchcock.
Dickinson proved to be a dazzling student and in 1847, though she was already somewhat of a ‘homebody’, at the age of seventeen Emily left for South Hadley, Massachusetts to attend the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She stayed there less than a year and some of the theories as to why she left are homesickness and poor health. Another reason some speculate is that when she refused to sign an oath publicly professing her faith in Christ, her ensuing chastisement from Mary Lyon proved to be too much humiliation. Back home in the patriarchal household of aspiring politicians, Emily started to write her first poems. She was in the midst of the college town’s society and bustle although she started to spend more time alone, reading and maintaining lively correspondences with friends and relatives.
In 1855 Emily and her sister spent time in the cities of Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the same year her father bought the Main Street home where she was born. He built an addition to The Homestead, replete with gardens and conservatory. Thereafter he held a yearly reception for Amherst College’s commencement, to which Emily made an appearance as the gracious hostess. In 1856 Emily’s brother, now himself a successful Harvard graduate and Amherst lawyer, married her best friend Susan Gilbert. They moved into their home nearby ‘The Evergreens’, a wedding gift from his father. They frequently entertained such guests as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, who would publish a few of Emily’s poems and become a great friend to her and possible object of affection in some of her poems. In 1862 Dickinson answered a call for poetry submissions in the Atlantic Monthly. She struck up a correspondence with its editor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He had tried to correct her work, but she refused to alter it, though they soon became friends and it is speculated that Emily also had romantic feelings for him.
Dark times were soon to fall on Emily. In 1864 and 1865 she went to stay with her Norcross cousins in Boston to see an eye doctor whereupon she was forbidden to read or write. It would be the last time she ventured from Amherst. By the early 1870’s Emily’s ailing mother was confined to her bed and Emily and her sister cared for her. Around the time her father Edward died suddenly in 1874 she stopped going out in public though she still kept up her social contacts via correspondence, writing at her desk in her austere bedroom, and seemed to have enjoyed her solitude. She regularly tended the homestead’s gardens and loved to bake, and the neighborhood children sometimes visited her with their rambunctious games. In 1878 her friend Samuel Bowles died and another of her esteemed friends Charles Wadsworth died in 1882, the same year her mother succumbed to her lengthy illness. A year later her brother Austin’s son Gilbert died. Dickinson herself had been afflicted for some time with her own illness affecting the kidneys, Bright’s Disease, symptoms of which include chronic pain and edema, which may have contributed to her seclusion from the outside world.
‘Called Back’: Emily Dickinson died on 15 May 1886, at the age of fifty-six. She now rests in the West Cemetery of Amherst, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. Not wishing a church service, a gathering was held at The Homestead. She was buried in one of the white dresses she had taken to wearing in her later years, violets pinned to her collar by Lavinia.
Although many friends including Helen Hunt Jackson had encouraged Dickinson to publish her poetry, only a handful of them appeared publicly during her lifetime. Upon her death her sister Lavinia found hundreds of them tied into ‘fascicles’ stitched together by Emily’s own hand. Some were written in pencil, only a few titled, many unfinished. Lavinia enlisted the aid of Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd to edit them and roughly arrange them chronologically into collections: Poems, Series 1 in 1890, Poems, Series 2 in 1891, and Poems, Series 3 in 1896. The edits were aggressive to standardise punctuation and capitalisation and some poems re-worded, but by and large it was a labour of love. From Thomas Wentworth Higginson's Preface to Poems, Series 1;
--flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame....the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight.
In 1914 Emily’s niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi published another of the many collections to follow. Even with the first few volumes her work attracted much attention, though not without its critics. In 1892, Thomas Bailey Aldrich published a scathing review in the Atlantic Monthly; She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced by the mannerism of Emerson....but the incoherence and formlessness of her—versicles are fatal. In 1955, Thomas H. Johnson published the first comprehensive collection of her poems in three volumes titled The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Including Variant Readings Critically Compared With all Known Manuscripts. Johnson’s The Letters of Emily Dickinson appeared in 1958.
This Is My Letter To The World This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
Immortality: This word rhymes with civility in Stanza 2, Line 4
.
.
We slowly drove, heknew no haste,
e:internal rhyme; kn, n: alliteration
And I had put away
hhhh:alliteration
My labor, and my leisure too,
lll:alliteration
For his civility.
civility: politeness, courtesy
.
.
We passed the school, where children strove
We passed: The repetition of these words at the beginning of
At recess, in the ring;
of three lines constitutes anaphora. rr:alliteration
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
school, fields, setting sun: symbols. School is the morning of
We passed the setting sun.
life, childhood; fields, midday of life, the working years; setting
.
sun, the evening of life, dying. gazing: ripe
.
.
Or rather, he passed us;
he passed: personification of sun
The dews grew quivering and chill,
ew: internal rhyme. gossamer gown: wedding dress for
For only gossamer my gown,
marrying death; gg: alliteration. tippet: scarf for neck and
My tippet only tulle.
shoulders; tulle: netting. tt: alliteration.
.
.
We paused before a house that seemed
house: her tomb, where she will "reside" during eternity
A swelling of the ground;
ss: alliteration with an "s" sound
The roof was scarcely visible,
ss: alliteration with a "z" sound
The cornice but a mound.
cornice: horizontal molding along top of a wall
.
.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
'tis centuries: centuries have passed since her death
Feels shorter than the day
shorter than the day: paradox in which a century is shorter
I first surmised the horses' heads
than a day
Were toward eternity.
hh: alliteration
Characters Narrator: She is a woman who calmly accepts death. In fact, she seems to welcome death as a suitor who she plans "marry." Death: The suitor who comes calling for the narrator to escort her to eternity. Immortality: A passenger in the carriage. Children: Boys and girls at play in a schoolyard. They symbolize early life. Stanza Format Each of the six stanzas has four lines. A four-line stanza is called a quatrain. Meter In each stanza, the first line has eight syllables (four feet); the second, six syllables (three feet); the third, eight syllables (four feet); and the fourth, six syllables (three feet). In each line (whether eight or six syllables), the first syllable is unstressed, the second is stressed, the third is unstressed, the fourth is stressed, and so on. Thus, the first and third lines of each stanza are in iambic tetrameter, and the second and fourth lines are in iambic trimeter. (If you need detailed information on meter, click here.) The following example demonstrates the metric scheme of the first two lines of Stanza 1. The unstressed syllables are in red; the stressed are in blue capital. Over each pair of syllables is a number representing the foot. Also, a black line separates the feet. ..........1..........................2......................3..........................4 Be CAUSE..|..I COULD..|..not STOP..|..for DEATH, ..........1.........................2........................3 He KIND..|..ly STOPPED..|..for ME; Critic's View: One of the Greatest Poems in English Allen Tate (1899-1979)–a distinguished American poet, teacher, and critic–observed that "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" is an extraordinary poem. In fact, he said, it deserves to be regarded as "one of the greatest in the English language; it is flawless to the last detail–Quoted in Brown, Clarence A., and John T. Flanagan, eds. American Literature: a College Survey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961, Page 436. Analysis and Commentary .......“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” reveals Emily Dickinson’s calm acceptance of death. It is surprising that she presents the experience as being no more frightening than receiving a gentleman caller–in this case, her fiancé. .......The journey to the grave begins in Stanza 1, when Death comes calling in a carriage in which Immortality is also a passenger. As the trip continues in Stanza 2, the carriage trundles along at an easy, unhurried pace, perhaps suggesting that death has arrived in the form of a disease or debility that takes its time to kill. Then, in Stanza 3, the author appears to review the stages of her life: childhood (the recess scene), maturity (the ripe, hence, “gazing” grain), and the descent into death (the setting sun)–as she passes to the other side. There, she experiences a chill because she is not warmly dressed. In fact, her garments are more appropriate for a wedding, representing a new beginning, than for a funeral, representing an end. .......Her description of the grave as her “house” indicates how comfortable she feels about death. There after centuries pass, so pleasant is her new life that time seems to stand still, feeling “shorter than a Day.” .......The overall theme of the poem seems to be that death is not to be feared since it is a natural part of the endless cycle of nature. Her view of death may also reflect her personality and religious beliefs. On the one hand, as a spinster, she was somewhat reclusive and introspective, tending to dwell on loneliness and death. On the other hand, as a Christian and a Bible reader, she was optimistic about her ultimate fate and appeared to see death as a friend.
The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson
By Brenda Wineapple
Illustrated. 416 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95
“Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?” was the unnerving question put by Emily Dickinson in one of the poems she sent to a new correspondent, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in the summer of 1862. The answer, fascinatingly explored in a book that pairs the reclusive Belle of Amherst with the man who assisted in the first posthumous publication of her work, is that Colonel Higginson both dared and feared. Meeting Dickinson for the first time in 1870, after eight years of correspondence, the colonel told his invalid wife he had never encountered anyone “who drained my nerve power so much.” Riding home to Newport, a town he loathed, Higginson was nevertheless ready to express gratitude that the newly fashionable resort stood no nearer to Amherst. “I am glad not to live near her,” he confessed.
In “White Heat,” Brenda Wineapple, author of an admired life of Nathaniel Hawthorne, doesn’t attempt to supplant Richard Sewall’s authoritative two-volume biography of Dickinson. Neither does she try to elucidate some of the enduring mysteries in Dickinson’s life: the nature of the eye disease that afflicted her in her mid-30s; the nature of her mother’s long illness; or the ailment that preceded her own death, at 55, in 1886. We still don’t know why Dickinson elected, well past her youth, to don only virginal white or — beyond a sense of shared mental and social superiority — what caused the members of her family to cling so tightly to one another. (Vinnie and Emily, the husbandless sisters, spent their entire lives under the parental roof; their lawyer brother, Austin, lived in coffined coldness with his wife, Susan Gilbert, within eyeshot of Emily’s bedroom window.)
Praising Sewall’s work, Wineapple takes him to task only for his dismissal of Higginson, a bias that betrays, as she puts it, “a presumption typical” of Sewall’s generation. By restoring the colonel to what now seems his rightful position — as a courageous, principled radical who was Dickinson’s chosen reader, admirer and advocate — Wineapple throws what she describes as “a small, considered beam” upon the work and life of these two “seemingly incompatible friends,” the recluse and the activist.
That “beam,” when directed by a writer as thorough and intuitive as Wineapple, brightens not only the pale figures of the poet and the hitherto elusive colonel but the poems for which, upon occasion, Dickinson drew inspiration from Higginson’s more active life.
Already a committed abolitionist, Higginson was about to take to the battlefield with the Union Army’s first regiment of freed slaves when — in response to a literary advice column he had written for The Atlantic Monthly — Dickinson sent him four poems, asking “if my Verse is alive.” Higginson did not appear to mind that his subsequent editorial suggestions were ignored; neither did he show surprise that such an audacious writer should have selected for her correspondent a man whose own poetry, as he himself recognized, suffered from a deadening sense of decorum. (“My gentility is chronic,” he lamented.) The answer, Wineapple leads us to conclude, was that Emily Dickinson sought not a master but a disciple: one whom she could bewitch, baffle (“The Riddle that we guess / We speedily despise,” she announced in one penciled offering) and engage as her audience.
The poet also, as Wineapple convincingly argues, relied on Higginson as a valued reporter from the world beyond her garden gate. Emily’s brother was among many New Englanders who elected to pay a substitute to take his place in the Union Army. Higginson had joined a clandestine group, known as the Secret Six, that backed John Brown’s planned attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. He had helped send rifles and ammunition to Kansas in the anti-slavery cause; in 1856, he had traveled there himself. In other words, Higginson was not afraid to fight for the cause in which he believed. Possibly, Dickinson’s poem “My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun” was inspired by a fiery Higginson essay, published in 1861, just before she began to correspond with him. (Later, she told her friend she had read every line he’d ever written: no mean achievement.) Certainly, the valiant colonel’s lost letters from the field of action — written with the “thrill of joy at last on finding myself in the position” where John Brown “only wished to be” — brought firsthand knowledge and fierce emotions into the placid backwater of Amherst. Emerson could squirm at the idea of Frederick Douglass joining the Town and Country Club; Dickinson’s lines “God of the Manacle / As of the Free —/ Take not my Liberty —/ Away from Me” suggest that she was imbibing her friend Higginson’s accounts, sharing his enthusiasm and, perhaps, spurring him on.
Scant though Higginson’s side of the correspondence with Dickinson is (much was destroyed), Wineapple employs the little that survives to great effect. Beyond his strong commitment to the cause of female emancipation (late in life, Higginson helped found Radcliffe College), the colonel admired the fiercely strange young woman he only ever met twice — by his choice, not hers. Dickinson’s hold over him was near to that of a siren. Higginson wrote of his longing to take her by the hand, to feel of value to her; in the same letter, he described the “fiery mist” in which Dickinson enveloped herself, allowing him only “rare sparkles of light.” How was it, he wondered, that someone who lived in such solitude could produce such thoughts? (A naïve question, from a man who revered Thoreau.)
In 1879, two years after the death of his sickly, childless wife, Higginson married a girlish beauty and soon became a doting father. As Wineapple comments, it was with almost perfect symmetry that Emily (who had lost her dour father in 1874) at that same time formed a passionate attachment to Edward Dickinson’s “crusty conservative” friend Judge Otis Lord. Surviving scraps of letters suggest she even considered becoming this elderly widower’s wife.
Lord died in 1884; Emily followed him two years later. Higginson, surviving both, joined forces with Mabel Todd, the longtime mistress of Austin Dickinson, to proclaim the hidden genius of Austin’s sister. Wineapple’s account of their testy collaborative editorship blames Todd for most of the notorious “improving” of the poems. While praising Higginson’s (usually overruled) wish to promote Dickinson’s poetry in its original form, this excellent biographer also reveals a bolder, stronger man than the feeble espouser of good causes devotees of Dickinson have been encouraged to despise. Emily Dickinson herself gains from this new perception in Wineapple’s lively, thoughtful and admirable book.
Miranda Seymour is the author of biographies of Mary Shelley and Robert Graves. Her most recent book is a memoir, “Thrumpton Hall.”
Table of Contents
Sources: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black-white_photograph_of_Emily_Dickinson.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wentworth_HigginsonOur discussion March 11, 2010
We had a fairly large group this time at the Thompsons' home.What's not to like about Emily? She is a fascina(oting character in her own right, despite (or because of?) a little agoraphobia and other personality quirks.
Higginson took up about half the book, as wass promised, and turned out to be a much more interesting person than he is usually depicted as in literary histories, thoughhe did try to get some poems more "grammatical" or more traditionally rhymed and metered. But he also supported John Brown's rebellion financially, stirred up the abolitionist movement, and led the first Black regiment into battle in the Civil War.
They both livied in a fascinating time, when many of the old New England giants of literature--Thoreau and Emerson, eg--were still alive and visited Emily's home, and when some of the newer experimentors, like Walt Whitman were emerging on the scene.
The book was quite a relief for its clarity and crisp prose after the very dense and redundant story of the Hemingses last month.
Biography of Dickinson and a few short poems, from Jack Thompson
Emily Dickinson Biography
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), ‘The Belle of Amherst’, American poet, wrote hundreds of poems including “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Heart, we will forget him!”, “I'm Nobody! Who are You?”, and “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!”;Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port, --
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart!
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in Thee!
Among the ranks of other such acclaimed poets as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson is considered one of the most original 19th Century American poets. She is noted for her unconventional broken rhyming meter and use of dashes and random capitalisation as well as her creative use of metaphor and overall innovative style. She was a deeply sensitive woman who questioned the puritanical background of her Calvinist family and soulfully explored her own spirituality, often in poignant, deeply personal poetry. She admired the works of John Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but avoided the florid and romantic style of her time, creating poems of pure and concise imagery, at times witty and sardonic, often boldly frank and illuminating the keen insight she had into the human condition. At times characterised as a semi-invalid, a hermit, a heartbroken introvert, or a neurotic agoraphobic, her poetry is sometimes brooding and sometimes joyous and celebratory. Her sophistication and profound intellect has been lauded by laymen and scholars alike and influenced many other authors and poets into the 21st Century. There has been much speculation and controversy over details of Dickinson’s life including her sexual orientation, romantic attachments, her later reclusive years, and the editing and publication of various volumes of her poems. This biography serves only as an overview of her life and poetry and leaves the in-depth analysis to the many scholars who have devoted years to the study of Emily Dickinson, the woman and her works.
Emily Dickinson was born into one of Amherst, Massachusetts’ most prominent families on 10 December 1830. She was the second child born to Emily Norcross (1804-1882) and Edward Dickinson (1803-1874), a Yale graduate, successful lawyer, Treasurer for Amherst College and a United States Congressman. Her grandfather Samuel Fowler Dickinson (1775-1838) was a Dartmouth graduate, accomplished lawyer and one of the founders of Amherst College. He also built one of the first brick homes in the New England town on Main Street, which is now a National Historic Landmark ‘The Homestead’ and one of the now preserved Dickinson homes in the Emily Dickinson Historic District.
Emily had an older brother named William Austin Dickinson (1829-1895) (known as Austin) who would marry her most intimate friend Susan Gilbert in 1856. Her younger sister’s name was Lavinia ‘Vinnie’ Norcross Dickinson (1833-1899). The Dickinsons were strong advocates for education and Emily too benefited from an early education in classic literature, studying the writings of Virgil and Latin, mathematics, history, and botany. Until she was ten years old, she and her family lived with her grandfather Samuel and his family on Main Street. In 1840 they moved to North Pleasant Street, Emily’s window overlooking the West Street Cemetery where daily burials occurred. The same year, Emily entered Amherst Academy under the tutelage of scientist and theologian, Edward Hitchcock.
Dickinson proved to be a dazzling student and in 1847, though she was already somewhat of a ‘homebody’, at the age of seventeen Emily left for South Hadley, Massachusetts to attend the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She stayed there less than a year and some of the theories as to why she left are homesickness and poor health. Another reason some speculate is that when she refused to sign an oath publicly professing her faith in Christ, her ensuing chastisement from Mary Lyon proved to be too much humiliation. Back home in the patriarchal household of aspiring politicians, Emily started to write her first poems. She was in the midst of the college town’s society and bustle although she started to spend more time alone, reading and maintaining lively correspondences with friends and relatives.
In 1855 Emily and her sister spent time in the cities of Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the same year her father bought the Main Street home where she was born. He built an addition to The Homestead, replete with gardens and conservatory. Thereafter he held a yearly reception for Amherst College’s commencement, to which Emily made an appearance as the gracious hostess. In 1856 Emily’s brother, now himself a successful Harvard graduate and Amherst lawyer, married her best friend Susan Gilbert. They moved into their home nearby ‘The Evergreens’, a wedding gift from his father. They frequently entertained such guests as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, who would publish a few of Emily’s poems and become a great friend to her and possible object of affection in some of her poems. In 1862 Dickinson answered a call for poetry submissions in the Atlantic Monthly. She struck up a correspondence with its editor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He had tried to correct her work, but she refused to alter it, though they soon became friends and it is speculated that Emily also had romantic feelings for him.
Dark times were soon to fall on Emily. In 1864 and 1865 she went to stay with her Norcross cousins in Boston to see an eye doctor whereupon she was forbidden to read or write. It would be the last time she ventured from Amherst. By the early 1870’s Emily’s ailing mother was confined to her bed and Emily and her sister cared for her. Around the time her father Edward died suddenly in 1874 she stopped going out in public though she still kept up her social contacts via correspondence, writing at her desk in her austere bedroom, and seemed to have enjoyed her solitude. She regularly tended the homestead’s gardens and loved to bake, and the neighborhood children sometimes visited her with their rambunctious games. In 1878 her friend Samuel Bowles died and another of her esteemed friends Charles Wadsworth died in 1882, the same year her mother succumbed to her lengthy illness. A year later her brother Austin’s son Gilbert died. Dickinson herself had been afflicted for some time with her own illness affecting the kidneys, Bright’s Disease, symptoms of which include chronic pain and edema, which may have contributed to her seclusion from the outside world.
‘Called Back’: Emily Dickinson died on 15 May 1886, at the age of fifty-six. She now rests in the West Cemetery of Amherst, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. Not wishing a church service, a gathering was held at The Homestead. She was buried in one of the white dresses she had taken to wearing in her later years, violets pinned to her collar by Lavinia.
Although many friends including Helen Hunt Jackson had encouraged Dickinson to publish her poetry, only a handful of them appeared publicly during her lifetime. Upon her death her sister Lavinia found hundreds of them tied into ‘fascicles’ stitched together by Emily’s own hand. Some were written in pencil, only a few titled, many unfinished. Lavinia enlisted the aid of Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd to edit them and roughly arrange them chronologically into collections: Poems, Series 1 in 1890, Poems, Series 2 in 1891, and Poems, Series 3 in 1896. The edits were aggressive to standardise punctuation and capitalisation and some poems re-worded, but by and large it was a labour of love. From Thomas Wentworth Higginson's Preface to Poems, Series 1;
--flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame....the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight.
In 1914 Emily’s niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi published another of the many collections to follow. Even with the first few volumes her work attracted much attention, though not without its critics. In 1892, Thomas Bailey Aldrich published a scathing review in the Atlantic Monthly; She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced by the mannerism of Emerson....but the incoherence and formlessness of her—versicles are fatal. In 1955, Thomas H. Johnson published the first comprehensive collection of her poems in three volumes titled The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Including Variant Readings Critically Compared With all Known Manuscripts. Johnson’s The Letters of Emily Dickinson appeared in 1958.
This Is My Letter To The World
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
Analysis in Wikipedia
- from Jack ThompsonNarrator: She is a woman who calmly accepts death. In fact, she seems to welcome death as a suitor who she plans "marry."
Death: The suitor who comes calling for the narrator to escort her to eternity.
Immortality: A passenger in the carriage.
Children: Boys and girls at play in a schoolyard. They symbolize early life.
Stanza Format
Each of the six stanzas has four lines. A four-line stanza is called a quatrain.
Meter
In each stanza, the first line has eight syllables (four feet); the second, six syllables (three feet); the third, eight syllables (four feet); and the fourth, six syllables (three feet). In each line (whether eight or six syllables), the first syllable is unstressed, the second is stressed, the third is unstressed, the fourth is stressed, and so on. Thus, the first and third lines of each stanza are in iambic tetrameter, and the second and fourth lines are in iambic trimeter. (If you need detailed information on meter, click here.) The following example demonstrates the metric scheme of the first two lines of Stanza 1. The unstressed syllables are in red; the stressed are in blue capital. Over each pair of syllables is a number representing the foot. Also, a black line separates the feet.
..........1..........................2......................3..........................4
Be CAUSE..|..I COULD..|..not STOP..|..for DEATH,
..........1.........................2........................3
He KIND..|..ly STOPPED..|..for ME;
Critic's View: One of the Greatest Poems in English
Allen Tate (1899-1979)–a distinguished American poet, teacher, and critic–observed that "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" is an extraordinary poem. In fact, he said, it deserves to be regarded as "one of the greatest in the English language; it is flawless to the last detail–Quoted in Brown, Clarence A., and John T. Flanagan, eds. American Literature: a College Survey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961, Page 436.
Analysis and Commentary
.......“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” reveals Emily Dickinson’s calm acceptance of death. It is surprising that she presents the experience as being no more frightening than receiving a gentleman caller–in this case, her fiancé.
.......The journey to the grave begins in Stanza 1, when Death comes calling in a carriage in which Immortality is also a passenger. As the trip continues in Stanza 2, the carriage trundles along at an easy, unhurried pace, perhaps suggesting that death has arrived in the form of a disease or debility that takes its time to kill. Then, in Stanza 3, the author appears to review the stages of her life: childhood (the recess scene), maturity (the ripe, hence, “gazing” grain), and the descent into death (the setting sun)–as she passes to the other side. There, she experiences a chill because she is not warmly dressed. In fact, her garments are more appropriate for a wedding, representing a new beginning, than for a funeral, representing an end.
.......Her description of the grave as her “house” indicates how comfortable she feels about death. There after centuries pass, so pleasant is her new life that time seems to stand still, feeling “shorter than a Day.”
.......The overall theme of the poem seems to be that death is not to be feared since it is a natural part of the endless cycle of nature. Her view of death may also reflect her personality and religious beliefs. On the one hand, as a spinster, she was somewhat reclusive and introspective, tending to dwell on loneliness and death. On the other hand, as a Christian and a Bible reader, she was optimistic about her ultimate fate and appeared to see death as a friend.
Review - Emily's Tryst
(submitted by Jack Thompson)August 24, 2008
Emily’s Tryst
By MIRANDA SEYMOURSkip to next paragraph
WHITE HEAT
The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth HigginsonBy Brenda Wineapple
Illustrated. 416 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95
“Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?” was the unnerving question put by Emily Dickinson in one of the poems she sent to a new correspondent, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in the summer of 1862. The answer, fascinatingly explored in a book that pairs the reclusive Belle of Amherst with the man who assisted in the first posthumous publication of her work, is that Colonel Higginson both dared and feared. Meeting Dickinson for the first time in 1870, after eight years of correspondence, the colonel told his invalid wife he had never encountered anyone “who drained my nerve power so much.” Riding home to Newport, a town he loathed, Higginson was nevertheless ready to express gratitude that the newly fashionable resort stood no nearer to Amherst. “I am glad not to live near her,” he confessed.
In “White Heat,” Brenda Wineapple, author of an admired life of Nathaniel Hawthorne, doesn’t attempt to supplant Richard Sewall’s authoritative two-volume biography of Dickinson. Neither does she try to elucidate some of the enduring mysteries in Dickinson’s life: the nature of the eye disease that afflicted her in her mid-30s; the nature of her mother’s long illness; or the ailment that preceded her own death, at 55, in 1886. We still don’t know why Dickinson elected, well past her youth, to don only virginal white or — beyond a sense of shared mental and social superiority — what caused the members of her family to cling so tightly to one another. (Vinnie and Emily, the husbandless sisters, spent their entire lives under the parental roof; their lawyer brother, Austin, lived in coffined coldness with his wife, Susan Gilbert, within eyeshot of Emily’s bedroom window.)
Praising Sewall’s work, Wineapple takes him to task only for his dismissal of Higginson, a bias that betrays, as she puts it, “a presumption typical” of Sewall’s generation. By restoring the colonel to what now seems his rightful position — as a courageous, principled radical who was Dickinson’s chosen reader, admirer and advocate — Wineapple throws what she describes as “a small, considered beam” upon the work and life of these two “seemingly incompatible friends,” the recluse and the activist.
That “beam,” when directed by a writer as thorough and intuitive as Wineapple, brightens not only the pale figures of the poet and the hitherto elusive colonel but the poems for which, upon occasion, Dickinson drew inspiration from Higginson’s more active life.
Already a committed abolitionist, Higginson was about to take to the battlefield with the Union Army’s first regiment of freed slaves when — in response to a literary advice column he had written for The Atlantic Monthly — Dickinson sent him four poems, asking “if my Verse is alive.” Higginson did not appear to mind that his subsequent editorial suggestions were ignored; neither did he show surprise that such an audacious writer should have selected for her correspondent a man whose own poetry, as he himself recognized, suffered from a deadening sense of decorum. (“My gentility is chronic,” he lamented.) The answer, Wineapple leads us to conclude, was that Emily Dickinson sought not a master but a disciple: one whom she could bewitch, baffle (“The Riddle that we guess / We speedily despise,” she announced in one penciled offering) and engage as her audience.
The poet also, as Wineapple convincingly argues, relied on Higginson as a valued reporter from the world beyond her garden gate. Emily’s brother was among many New Englanders who elected to pay a substitute to take his place in the Union Army. Higginson had joined a clandestine group, known as the Secret Six, that backed John Brown’s planned attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. He had helped send rifles and ammunition to Kansas in the anti-slavery cause; in 1856, he had traveled there himself. In other words, Higginson was not afraid to fight for the cause in which he believed. Possibly, Dickinson’s poem “My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun” was inspired by a fiery Higginson essay, published in 1861, just before she began to correspond with him. (Later, she told her friend she had read every line he’d ever written: no mean achievement.) Certainly, the valiant colonel’s lost letters from the field of action — written with the “thrill of joy at last on finding myself in the position” where John Brown “only wished to be” — brought firsthand knowledge and fierce emotions into the placid backwater of Amherst. Emerson could squirm at the idea of Frederick Douglass joining the Town and Country Club; Dickinson’s lines “God of the Manacle / As of the Free —/ Take not my Liberty —/ Away from Me” suggest that she was imbibing her friend Higginson’s accounts, sharing his enthusiasm and, perhaps, spurring him on.
Scant though Higginson’s side of the correspondence with Dickinson is (much was destroyed), Wineapple employs the little that survives to great effect. Beyond his strong commitment to the cause of female emancipation (late in life, Higginson helped found Radcliffe College), the colonel admired the fiercely strange young woman he only ever met twice — by his choice, not hers. Dickinson’s hold over him was near to that of a siren. Higginson wrote of his longing to take her by the hand, to feel of value to her; in the same letter, he described the “fiery mist” in which Dickinson enveloped herself, allowing him only “rare sparkles of light.” How was it, he wondered, that someone who lived in such solitude could produce such thoughts? (A naïve question, from a man who revered Thoreau.)
In 1879, two years after the death of his sickly, childless wife, Higginson married a girlish beauty and soon became a doting father. As Wineapple comments, it was with almost perfect symmetry that Emily (who had lost her dour father in 1874) at that same time formed a passionate attachment to Edward Dickinson’s “crusty conservative” friend Judge Otis Lord. Surviving scraps of letters suggest she even considered becoming this elderly widower’s wife.
Lord died in 1884; Emily followed him two years later. Higginson, surviving both, joined forces with Mabel Todd, the longtime mistress of Austin Dickinson, to proclaim the hidden genius of Austin’s sister. Wineapple’s account of their testy collaborative editorship blames Todd for most of the notorious “improving” of the poems. While praising Higginson’s (usually overruled) wish to promote Dickinson’s poetry in its original form, this excellent biographer also reveals a bolder, stronger man than the feeble espouser of good causes devotees of Dickinson have been encouraged to despise. Emily Dickinson herself gains from this new perception in Wineapple’s lively, thoughtful and admirable book.
Miranda Seymour is the author of biographies of Mary Shelley and Robert Graves. Her most recent book is a memoir, “Thrumpton Hall.”